Puzzle
by idlyby221
Summary: Post-Reichenbach. Three years after The Fall John's putting himself back together piece by piece. Then a murder. Mistaken identities. The reappearance of at least one person he'd long thought dead. He doesn't dare hope who's waiting at the end.
1. Paid in Full

**Chapter One: Paid in Full**

_Gunfire. A tangle of legs and limbs. Running. Pulling. Aching. Never enough. Gasping for scorching breath under the burning sun. The iron jungle of a city rising up somehow more terrifying than the desert. Dodging cars like bullets and exploding glass. A parade of the faces of the wounded and the lost, the ones John could have saved. The ones he didn't save. They flicker by, accusatory and flush with the life he'd denied them. All but one, the last one, who lingers, mouthing something that John can't make out, will never make out, no matter how hard he strains to catch the words. _

John jolts awake, drenched in a cold sweat, chest heaving. John jolts awake late. Again. He glances at the clock and – yes. Very late.

The cupboards are empty enough that grabbing a quick breakfast won't be an option. Groaning, he fights the impulse to worm back into the warmth of his bed sheets (wound around his waist in a like a cocoon) and drags his sore body to the shower.

Five minutes later he stumbles downstairs, his hair still damp and tousled, his shirt rucked up in the back. He trips over his shoes at the bottom of the stairs, and as he drags himself upright he chances to glance into the kitchen.

The presumably empty kitchen.

A full breakfast has been laid out for him and two other places, complete with flatware and napkins. The smell of rashers makes his stomach growl – just curry takeout last night, nothing fancy or all that substantial – and –

Sarah will survive a quarter hour without him.

His first thought, fumbling, foolish, is that Mrs. Hudson's done the shopping again, in spite of his repeated protests that she oughtn't to be navigating the stairs with groceries and her bad hip. John riffles through the cupboards quickly, and really, that's the only possible explanation, because the takeout cartons in the bin are proof he'd not been this well-stocked last night.

New jam. Lovely. The French kind – Bonne Maman – that always makes him think of Mycroft. Coffee's already steaming in his place. John takes his seat, feeling a burgeoning fondness for his landlady, and unfolds the paper.

The coffee is halfway to his lips when he freezes, staring blankly at the weather page.

Mrs. Hudson is in Bath for the week, visiting her sister.

Two other plates. Who's the company?

_What's the occasion, Mycroft? –JW_

He sips the coffee, tucking his phone under the rim of his plate, because he's bloody tired, and because it smells damn good, and because he implicitly trusts the only two people with unlimited access to the flat and more than a cursory understanding of his taste in jams. Yes. He implicitly trusts Mycroft Holmes.

_Tea with the German Prime Minister, but something tells me that's not what you're asking. What's going on, John? –MH_

Mycroft knows he doesn't take sugar. The realisation hits when he's already swallowed halfway, but that doesn't stop him from gagging and spewing coffee over a two-page spread about a box office favourite. Cursing his own daftness tenfold, John manages to keep his wits long enough to text back:

_Cancel with Frau Merkel. May have just been poisoned. Come at once. –JW_

He then induces vomiting, and spends the next fifteen minutes in the loo.

When Mycroft arrives and sees the spread, which John has left untouched in his haste to purge, he blanches alarmingly. It does nothing to quell John's jangling nerves.

"You've not been poisoned, Doctor Watson," says Mycroft, looking a bit put-out. His eyes narrow as they sweep the flat and detect all the things John couldn't. "Unless you're morbidly allergic to milk."

That much, John had noticed. A full shelf of milk bottles in the refrigerator. He _had_ wondered.

"Then what?" He wipes a weak hand over his trembling, foul-tasting mouth and wonders if Mycroft still bugs the flat. He'd probably have video records. Although if that's the case there's no reason Mycroft would have been unaware of the intruder.

The other man's grimace makes him uneasy. "A stalker, Doctor Watson. I do believe you've acquired one."

The bell rings below, and Mycroft makes a gesture as if to indicate that his people will take care of it. "There's no need to look so anxious," he says, planting himself in the seat opposite John's vacated one and buttering himself a scone. "It's all perfectly safe. He's got a poor sense of humour is all."

To this day John cannot watch Mycroft eating without hearing Sherlock's sly voice in his ear. _How's the diet_?

"In that case I'm sorry I interrupted your meeting with Angela," John says sharply, leaning against the doorframe. "Clearly it wasn't a national emergency." His guest is all soft angles and crisp lines, too at home in his brother's flat. John doesn't have the heart to tell him to leave, even though Sherlock would be spinning in his grave to see the two of them sharing pastries.

Mycroft waves off his concern and greets the newcomer without even turning around to see who's there. "Ah. Gregory. Just on time for breakfast, I'm afraid. Do come in."

"For heaven's sake. I called you, not the Police." By now, John's getting annoyed. Mycroft seems to be enjoying himself a good deal more than is strictly called for.

Greg stands pale in the doorway, looking for all the world like he's just run a marathon to get here. Outside it's pouring – John heard the rain the moment he woke –, and Lestrade stands dripping on the carpet, no umbrella in sight. He nods curtly at Mycroft, then doesn't spare him a second glance. "John, there's been a break in. Will you come?"

"Tower of London," says Mycroft silkily, reaching into his briefcase to pull out a file. "Eight fifteen this morning. Nothing taken, but a rather curious artefact left behind."

The DI opens his mouth, then closes it again, and falls into an empty chair, reaching for a doughnut. "Good spread. Mrs Hudson?"

"Something of the sort, yes."

If Mrs Hudson were here she'd be up fussing about Greg's wet clothes and the state of her carpet, and all three of them know it.

"An artefact left behind?" John sits, too, feeling oddly out of place in his own kitchen. He hates it when Mycroft does this, bursts in and acts like he's responsible for absolutely everything. Eleven times out of ten he is, but that's not the point. The point is that Sherlock wasn't exaggerating for once when he called Mycroft an "insufferable megalomaniac who above all loves the sound of his own voice."

He shakes off the thought of Sherlock, ignoring the sting. He takes it out on Mycroft more than he should. The man has been nothing but generous and kind these past few years. It's hardly his fault that he's a vivid reminder of everything that went wrong.

"Body." Greg's wearing that shifty, haunted look of his that John has come to dread because it usually means one of three things.

1. Particularly gory crime scene. Greg's a trained law enforcer with a stomach stronger than even John's. When he gets shaky, it's dreadful.

2. Someone they know. Knew. This has only happened twice, and John never wants to see that look on his friend's face again.

3. All of the above. Worst case scenario. One memorable occasion, and it plays out in John's nightmares to this day.

"Whose?" To hide his nerves, John takes another bracing sip of the awful coffee. Mrs Hudson his arse. Something about the frown lines around Mycroft's eyes is not entirely reassuring, but the man's too vain to poison himself, so it must be safe.

Greg reaches for John's abandoned paper and smoothes it open to page three. The two-page article John had defiled just moments ago. "Sebastian Moran. Irish film producer."

John skims the article, but finds nothing telling. "Film producers have died before," he says, painfully aware of how callous he sounds to his own ears. "What's special about this one?"

"Thirty-four. It's his first ever film. Brilliant criminal drama. Meant to be a masterpiece. I haven't seen it, but Anderson recommended it to me."

"What the Detective Inspector means to say is that if Moran weren't an artist I'd already have my men digging into his background trying to discern how many cold cases we can tie back to him. If he were in the industry he'd likely be the most brilliant criminal mind of his time."

A salacious smile.

"You've been tracking him, then." For all his brilliance, sometimes Mycroft is remarkably transparent.

"Of course."

"What have you found?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing." He pronounces the word like it's sour and distasteful on his tongue. "Sebastian Moran didn't exist on public records until eighteen months ago when he began production for _Janus_. Since his appearance he's been a model citizen. Worth a tidy eight-digit sum. Donates regularly to charity. Lives in London half the time, spends the other half at his country home in Sussex or in production meetings."

"Network?" Greg asks, pinching the bridge of his nose. John looks back and forth between them, wishing he had the power to read in Mycroft's frown and in Lestrade's grey complexion just what exactly about _this _particular crime scene justified cancelling appointments with the German Prime Minster and dashing across the city without so much as an umbrella.

"As you might expect. Checks out clean."

"On the surface."

Mycroft spreads his hands wide. "I am devoting every ounce of my not inconsiderable power to get to the bottom of it."

"Thank you."

They stare at each other for a moment. John's in no particular mood for melodramatics.

"Do you at least have pictures?"

Greg fishes in the pocket of his damp coat and passes his phone to John.

John takes one look at the first picture open, and stands. "Mycroft, have you got a car?"

Sarah will bloody well survive without him.

They leave together.

...

The last time John was here, it was to watch Lestrade's men hauling the devil himself out of the supposedly unbreakable glass case. Today's scene differs very little, except for that this time the body being dragged out of the debris is unmistakably dead. The three men cross the yellow tape and come instinctively to a stop.

"It was three years ago today," says Mycroft eventually.

John says nothing, but steps closer once Anderson's crew has moved out enough to give him space. The wreckage is much the same as last time. Glass shattered by a blunt blow. Traces of writing on the shards.

"Paid in full." Lestrade comes to stand beside John. "Reconstructed view on the security tapes."

"Are there tapes, then?" John struggles to keep his voice steady, even as the déjà-vu takes his breath away. This is the sort of thing he'd spent two years with a therapist for. It's too fresh, still. Raw like the jagged teeth of broken glass at their feet.

"Nothing." Mycroft spits the word. With the tip of his umbrella he draws tracks in the rubble. "They got the room empty somehow. Footage shows no change, then the words _Paid in full_ on the glass, then this." He waves the umbrella at the scene. "Twenty second gaps in the tape. They worked fast."

"I take it you're scrubbing the system for holes, yes?"

"And fired half the Tower security team," Lestrade says mildly. "But that doesn't negate the damage that's already been done."

"But they didn't take anything?"

"Not a thing. Apart from Moran there's no obvious motive for the break in."

Excepting the date, of course, and the precise choreography of the heist. But none of them says that out loud.

John's heart is like a kick drum in his ribcage. He is keenly aware of Mycroft's hawk-like gaze trained on the pulse in his throat and the steadiness of his hands at his side, and of Greg's concerned silence, of the way that the entire crew from the Yard keeps glancing at him when they think he's not watching, like he's about to go off at any moment.

"Mind if I get a closer look?" He brushes past them to get a better view of the throne, beside which the crown and sceptre have been neatly placed. The body, from the quick glimpse he'd had before Anderson had ruined the entire pool of evidence, had seemed largely unharmed. In truth, John detects only trace amounts of blood (tacky and half-dried. Body had been there for an hour at most), and no sign of an obvious struggle. Victim had been dead before arrival on the scene.

"Checking the ground for prints?" he says vaguely to Lestrade, who's hovering.

"Tower receives hundreds if not thousands of tourists each day."

"This one was carrying something heavy. And it's raining. They'll be loads of tracks in the mud." Something pale catches his eye. He kneels to pull a thin white envelope from under the front leg of the throne. It's got his name on it. "Gloves?"

Mycroft plucks it from his fingers and tucks it into his breast pocket. "Best I hold onto this for now."

"But –"

Sally materialises to tug the sleeve of Lestrade's coat. He turns to her and she murmurs something low in his ear that John can't pick out but is willing to bet money Mycroft can lip read. With a tight nod they're both gone again, squaring their shoulders with the professionalism required to deal with the gaunt, trembling tourism manager in the corner.

"No buts, Doctor Watson. I cannot in good conscience let you handle unscreened evidence. I'm afraid we need you elsewhere. It wouldn't do for you to be indisposed."

Straightforward but not ill-intentioned. Genuine concern for him softens Mycroft's cunning, fox-like features, and something twinges in John's chest. In spite of all his appearances, and the things his brother might have said about him, one does well to recall that Mycroft Holmes is no less human or vulnerable than other men. None of them will say it out loud because none of them wants to admit they're still shaken, but today – the significance of _this date_ – has struck them to the core.

"This was no accident," John says hoarsely.

"I'm afraid you'll find that very little in this world is coincidental." Mycroft's gaze sweeps over the scene. Observing. Taking note. Seeing everything. It's painfully reminiscent of someone _else_. "And accordingly, nothing should be treated as such."

They lock eyes for a long moment. Officers and agents bustle around them (no press, though. Mycroft must have asserted control over the situation even before it broke out) but never touch, as if the silent understanding between the two of them creates a bubble no one else can burst.

"Paid in full?" In his head, John cannot help but to preface: _I owe you one, Sherlock_. He's tried hard not to think about Sherlock Holmes, yes. But more than that, he's tried desperately to forget Jim Moriarty. Flashbacks of being held at gunpoint, of Semtex and lasers, of disinfectant and the smell of sliced apples. His hands are clenched in fists at his sides.

_Jim Moriarty. Hi._

"I believe it might behove you to accompany the corpse to the mortuary at Saint Bartholomew's Hospital. You might find Molly Hooper... indisposed."

"Have you done something with her?"

"Nothing of the sort. But your steady hand surely wouldn't come amiss. I am more than certain Sarah Sawyer won't be put-out if you take the day off."

"I wasn't particularly planning on going back."

"Then perhaps the whole rest of the month."

And then sometimes, despite their moments of mutual understanding, John finds Mycroft's smile downright unsettling. "We'll see about that."

"Anthea will take you."

John recognises when he's been dismissed.

"Doctor Watson?"

He pauses, mid-stride.

Mycroft reaches deep into the inner pocket of his blazer and offers the envelope to John. "I believe it's best that Gregory not know the contents of this letter, for the time being. Should it not be what I think it is, do call me and I'll send for the bomb squad at once."

Hesitating, John accepts it. The envelope is unornamented but the paper is smooth, thick and fine-grained. High quality. His name is printed in black ink. Times New Roman.

"I'm afraid you'll find no more clues on it." Then, "Don't read it here."

So John leaves. As promised, the car is waiting for him. He pays Anthea no heed, because he's learned by now that it's absolutely not worth the time, and instead carefully works open the flap of the envelope and unfolds the single page inside, to read a single line of text.

_Apologies for any future complications. If you have need of anything, you need only ask._

Followed by a phone number. It's unsigned, but that's hardly surprising. What is surprising is the way ideas bubble to the surface, unbidden and most certainly unwelcome, before John can quash them. The dizzying possibilities take his breath away, and he grips the door handle reflexively, ignoring Anthea as she ignores him.

It can't be. John Watson prides himself on rationality, and the thoughts he's entertaining are far from rational. No, it can't be. Speculation has never got him anywhere, and he doesn't plan on trying now.

Nevertheless, he enters the number in his contacts, and when Anthea lets him out in front of St Bart's his knees are weak. Only eleven o'clock in the morning and it has already been the most stressful day he's had in at least a year. He can feel the electricity crackling through his veins, sharpening his senses. He waves to the unmarked black car as it pulls away, and straightens his spine on the doorstep of Bart's.

_The ones John could have saved. The ones he didn't save._

He realises what's kept him going this long is the minute chance of redemption.

* * *

><p><em>Idea a prompt from a lovely Sherlockian on Tumblr. Please consider this my humble gift to you. Chapter 1 of what promises to be rather a lot. <em>

_Thank you for reading. If you liked it feel free to let me know! You can find me here or on Tumblr (link on my profile)._


	2. Uncovered

**Chapter Two: Uncovered**

Initially, John had tried – really tried – to give St. Bart's a wide berth after the fact. He'd taken different routes across town, met Molly and Greg at a pub much closer to the flat when they'd gone for drinks a few times, and stopped seeing Stamford altogether, because Mike was so buried in his research at the time that the only place he'd have seen John would have been _there_.

Evasion tactics worked for maybe four months, until the day Greg practically kidnapped John and dragged him to a crime scene. It was a long night – double infanticide, drug smuggling – but as much as John had wanted to stay away, he found those hours of constant commotion and intense focus to be more natural than anything he'd felt in a very long time. Greg stayed with him when they finally left the mortuary at half two in the morning, followed him home and forced him to eat a bowl of soup and change into pyjamas before collapsing into bed. And he was back the next morning to triple-check that John was really coping as well as he'd claimed. He then made John breakfast that he forced him to eat, and popped the question.

"I'd like to apologise. I really fucked everything up. I can't help thinking if I hadn't gone to the Super, then maybe –"

John shrugged as if he'd not already thought the same thing a hundred times over. He couldn't be angry with Greg for doing what he'd thought right.

"You know his methods better than the rest of him." In the silence, Greg pinched the bridge of his nose, as if struggling for composure. "It was like seeing him there again."

Steam rose from John's nearly untouched mug of coffee. It caught in the light from the window, a handful of rainbow prisms in the pearly grey. Constant. Fragile. Dancing.

"Look – I know it's hard. But we'd love to have you from time to time, if wanted –"

_To help keep his memory alive_.

"We could really use a consultant, John."

John was quiet for a long time, thinking and rethinking answers that died on his tongue each time he tried to voice them. He found the will to speak when it looked like Greg was about to apologise and leave hastily.

"Just clear _me_ with the Super first, yeah? I don't want to end up in handcuffs again."

Greg barked out a laugh, and John found himself genuinely smiling for the first time in months.

Now, of course, John's been back dozens of times – for social calls, medical conferences, and a slew of cases for Lestrade and the rest of the Yard – but he can't help dreading every visit. Sherlock's ghost is everywhere: sprawled in front on the pavement, hanging about the mortuary, and flitting between shelves of test tubes in his favourite lab where John last saw him.

Molly's already at work on the body when he arrives, sliding the suit jacket from slim shoulders. She looks up at the sound his latex gloves make when he snaps them on, and he sees that in the unforgiving sterile light of the mortuary she's paler than normal, colourless in her white coat in the white room. The only splashes of colour here, John notes, with a curious lurch of nausea, are the man's dark suit and the blood stain that blooms over the chest of his white shirt.

"'Lo," he says quietly. Autopsies have never been his favourite part of the process, but he's grown to appreciate them from an informational standpoint. Sherlock gathered clues from the scene itself – a trace of Kent mud here, tiny scratch marks there – but John's field has always been the human body. He works backwards, reconstructing the crime with each level of injury he unveils, until he's got a clear portrait of the time of death, the murder weapon, and the methods of administration. Sometimes if he's lucky he'll get a rough outline of the killer, too. High blows or low ones. Weak scratches. Expert knots tied. A hair. A whiff of cologne.

In the absence of fresh blood, Moran's dark jacket pools around his pale body on the table where Molly drops it. She glances up and smiles faintly, but he can tell she's shaken.

"You all right?"

"Yeah, I'm great. Bit tired, though. Had a long day. Actually, do you mind if I pop out for just a minute?" Her eyes crinkle around the corners. There is a deep crease in her high brow.

"Is something wrong? Can I do anything?"

"Not at all. I just need a bit of air, if you don't mind getting started on your own."

"That's fine. Please do." John frowns at her in askance, but she just gives a quick toss of her head and flees to the back room.

Still frowning, he turns back to the body. He's never seen Sebastian Moran before, but there's something irritatingly familiar about the cadaver.

Molly's shucked the jacket, but John reaches instinctively to fold it before moving to unlace patent leather shoes. Expensive is a word that comes to mind. The jacket is Hugo Boss. The shirt feels like silk through his gloves. The dark pants are exquisitely tailored, so form-fitting that John has to work to get them off the slender hips.

From the dull red stain in the front of the dress shirt, John expects to find a messy bullet wound when he undoes the buttons. Instead, he finds a surgically precise gap in the victim's chest, so clean that the edges of the wound have been expertly cauterized. The ribcage has been broken neatly, and the heart removed entirely.

_I will burn the heart out of you._

The memory is impossible to shake off; Moriarty's words echo too loud in his ears, amplified no doubt by the morning's déjà-vu. He stares down at the body, chewing the inside of his cheek, and on whim feels the tip of Moran's long, corpulent nose. It's hard to tell through the layer of latex, but it seems a touch warmer than it ought to be, and gives under slight pressure. John grips the nose firmly, and tugs. A false nose comes off in his hands, giving way to one that is much smaller, much sharper. Unnerved, John gives the ginger eyebrows a brisk tug, and they yield to uncover thin, arching dark brows. He works off the wig of rich auburn curls. The man's real hair is a buzzed short, ink black and glossy over his pale scalp.

Suddenly, John's tongue is bitter with the coppery taste of the blood that's rushing in his ears. With hands that are perfectly steady, betraying his galloping heart, he moistens a sponge and wipes layer after layer of stage makeup from the cadaver's face until the man lying on the slab could never be mistaken for Sebastian Moran, if Moran's even a real person. No, he's staring down into the half-smiling slack face that's tumbled through his nightmares for the past three years, that's leered up at him from the tabloids he's tried so desperately to avoid. It's the face of a man who, by all counts, died three years and some months ago on the roof of this very hospital, facing his worst adversary, felled by his own bullet. John's knees buckle and he braces himself with locked arms on the slab, his hands mere inches away from the body of one James Moriarty.

He thinks he might be sick.

_I will burn the heart out of you. Paid in full._

Jesus.

Just as he's fumbling for his phone to send Mycroft and Greg a distress signal, Molly pokes her head back in Her eyes are red-rimmed and raw, but she seems otherwise unshaken by the sight of her ex boyfriend lying dead on her countertop. John's at a complete loss what to say to her.

"I did wonder," she says, shutting the door firmly behind herself. "The tie I took off him – it was _his_." It's laced through her fingers like a dark stain, like she's been playing with it for the past quarter hour, trying to make sense of the implications and failing as miserably as John is right now. She doesn't quite look at him when she adds, "I thought I might have been going mad."

John strips off his gloves – they leave his fingers chalky and dry – and rubs his jaw, aware in the gleaming aseptic light of two days' worth of stubble. The room drains him. Drains Molly. The two of them are like shades here, bleached by the stark horror of Moriarty's sudden reappearance. The cadaver is the only real thing in the mortuary, and it's fully impossible.

"If you're mad then we're in it together."

She gives another fleeting smile and reaches into the pocket of her lab coat to pull out an envelope identical to the one he's stuffed guiltily into his bomber jacket in the locker room. Holds it out to him.

"Where did you get this?"

"Waiting for me in the lab when I stepped out." She brandishes it at him. "It's for you."

He can see that. But he's reluctant to accept it because it's another dot he's got to connect somehow. He doesn't want to try. He can see what they _could_ form but to be wrong would be to lose his hold on everything all over again. To be right would be the most glorious, most impossible thing that'd ever happen to him. It would be easier to turn his back now, to ignore it. The possibilities are terrifying.

"John."

He slits the envelope and pulls out another single sheet of paper.

_Well done, John. Moriarty was real. Who else?_

_317 Montague St. Please come._

_Could be dangerous._

"Did you –" Words stick in his throat. He doesn't want to do this in front of an audience. "Was there any sign of who left this?"

She shakes her head. "What's it say?"

"It's just an address." Roughly, he stuffs the note back into the envelope before she can see. "Molly –" and he hates that his voice is not completely steady, wonders if she notices. She probably does, but she's too sweet to say anything – "do you terribly mind if I leave you to clean this up? I've got something I've got to take care of."

Molly reaches out and touches his arm. "Not at all. I can handle him, John."

It's awful, leaving her alone with Moriarty. He doesn't entirely trust the man not to leap back up off the slab, grinning that awful grin of his. Nothing seems impossible today. Helplessly he gestures to the wiry body, so strangely vulnerable out of his protective shield of posh clothing and snipers. It's difficult to equate the dead man with the spider whose web had ensnared them all for so long.

"What do you think it means?"

"I don't know." Her hand is still warm and reassuring on his arm, anchoring him in place. Grounding him to reality. John Watson is grateful to the bone for Molly Hooper. She's one of the few who can meet his gaze without pity. Rather, she's as desperate for answers as he is. Neither of them says it – they never talk about it – but they both loved and are still mourning the same man. Anything to get to the bottom of this. He rests his hand atop hers, and squeezes. "But I swear to you I'll figure it out."

"Then go."

He's favouring his left leg on his way out. Psychosomatic. Usually John does his best to ignore the limp, but he's had to go so far as to get the old cane back out on three notable occasions. Ella says it's perfectly normal – only to be expected – but Ella's been terribly wrong before.

He pauses on the curb (God, just beside where _it_ happened) and casts about for a cab, since Anthea's left without him. A flyer pinned to the telephone post catches his eye, the bright yellow paper peeping out from between at least three layers of new adverts, and he shuffles closer to pull it down. Almost as soon as he's got it, he drops it: Sherlock's face stares up at him, glowering from under the deerstalker in that horrid press release photo Greg had made him pose for.

_I BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK HOLMES_.

The movement is mostly dead now, thank God; the constant glimpses of his flatmate's face had been doing very little for his mental health. Each one was like a punch to the gut. And yet the other one, less frequent, but equally relevant –_ MORIARTY WAS REAL_.

Well.

He hails a cab and mumbles the address to the driver at the same time as he texts it to Mycroft, followed by a simple _Is it safe?_

Mycroft calls back at once. "There is no immediate danger to your person, Doctor Watson."

This is hardly a comfort. Coming from him, "no immediate danger" could mean anything from completely deserted premises to an opponent John would ultimately defeat after rousing hand-to-hand combat.

"Do you have security lined up in case?"

"Naturally."

"Listen, Mycroft, about Moran –"

"Did you recognise the body?" His usually placid voice comes quickly, too sharp, and betrays his eagerness.

John licks his lips, hesitating. Saying out loud makes it real. "Moriarty."

"Ah."

There's silence on the line. It's one of the few times Mycroft has ever been stunned speechless, and John decides he prefers the man's irritating smugness to this tremendously vulnerable uncertainty.

"In that case, Doctor, we're going to have to mind our steps from here on out. Jim Moriarty was a powerful man with as many enemies as he had allies."

Surely, though, his assassin couldn't be operating with malicious intent, not if Mycroft's allowing John to correspond with him. He repeats the question he asked Molly. "What does it mean? How is this possible, Mycroft? Tell me it's not possible." He prefers to avoid false-hope at all costs.

Mycroft laughs, and John instantly wants to throttle him. Good. Everything is back in working order. "I do believe the purpose of this exercise is that you get to the bottom of that."

John hangs up, grimacing, and forces himself to watch the scenery as it flickers past. Grey. Drab. All of it. He realises that he's tapping his foot anxiously. Ever since the Study in Pink he's hated cabs. The city is dangerous today, a minefield he's struggling to navigate.

The cab finally pulls to a stop in front of 317 Montague, and John shoves a handful of bills at the driver, nearly tripping over his own feet in his hurry to get out onto the street. It's drizzling. He turns his collar up against the rain. This part of town is quiet, residential, and by the empty windows and unkempt lawn he hazards a guess that no. 317 is unoccupied. A blinking red light at the corner of his eye catches his attention, and something loosens in his stomach when he locates the security camera. Mycroft got here fast. Too fast.

The doorknob is loose under his hand, and turns easily. The weather-beaten door opens into a musty hallway. There is no furniture, no ornamentation, nothing but a single bare light bulb. The stairs rising to his left are uncarpeted, and the wall paper is worn with age. Something about the screaming emptiness of the house sends a prickle running down John's spine.

Grey light from outside filters through the dusty, speckled windows, casting the hall into alternating patches of watery light and dark shadow. It's just bright enough for John to see the footsteps in the carpet of dust on the bare hardwood floor. They're purposeful and self-assured. He can tell by the spacing that the person is a good six inches taller than he, slender, and impatient. Instinct kicks in and, at a loss for instruction, he follows the tracks.

Halfway down the hall the woman abandoned her shoes; he nearly trips over the silky stilettos where they were left in the middle of the floor. Her prints continue, barefoot now. Around the corner he picks up her long wool pea coat and drapes it over his arm, thinking it'd be a shame if the dust rubbed in and stained the elegant cloth. Light bleeds out from the cracks of the door at the end of the hall. That's where she must be. He can smell her perfume now, and it sends him flashing back to three years ago. It's familiar enough to make him wrinkle his nose at the same time as it speeds his pulse.

Just because he's expecting her doesn't make it any less shocking when he opens the door to what must be the living room. This room, at least, is furnished if only minimally. A threadbare couch. A tacky bookshelf, crammed with old, used travel books and well-thumbed restaurant guides. Another bare bulb, though it's scarcely necessary in this room, where the entire back wall is windows of pearly grey light. The floor is a maze of cardboard boxes and filing cabinets, stacked close together leaving just enough room to walk from door to couch to bookshelf and back again.

And she sits at the centre of it.

Her hair tumbles free around her shoulders and frames her face, free of makeup. Though she's as elegant as always there is a frailty to her posture and a vulnerability in her brow that weren't there before. Irene Adler looks up from the thick sheaf of paper she's reading through, and smiles easily, with recognition.

"Hello, John."

* * *

><p><em>I will probably do a full editorial read-through later tonight. Until then I apologise for any mistakes. Hoping to get chapter 3 up within the week, although it'll take a bit more time because real plot starts here.<em>

_Thanks to those of you who read and reviewed! Never hesitate to let me know what you think. You can find me here or on Tumblr (link on my profile)._


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